Space and Sensibility : Young Men’s Risk-Taking with Motor Vehicles

Sammanfattning: In this ethnographic study of “Volvo greasers” [Volvoraggare] in a peri-urban community in Sweden, risk-taking practices with motor vehicles, such as speeding and drifting, are explored and analyzed in relation to age, gender, class and place. Young men’s risk-taking with motor vehicles regularly generates public debate as a traffic safety issue, often resulting in various policy suggestions, such as curfews or raising of the driving licence age. Seldom are these suggested solutions based on critical ethnographic research where intersections of age, gender, class and place are highlighted. The study is based on ethnographic fieldwork, that is, participant observation, and informal and formal interviews, with greaser men and women between the ages of 15 and 19, as well as formal interviews with pupils at the local high school and with youth centre staff in the local community.The study has two overarching aims. The first is empirical: to make visible an under-studied area of contemporary youth culture in Sweden – the (Volvo) greasers. In order to understand how the greasers’ risk-taking with vehicles is manifested, talked about and practised, the thesis critically engages with the contexts of the risk-taking practices and their effects at both the material and the discursive levels. The second aim is theoretical. Through contextualization as an analytical tool, a theoretical contribution of the thesis is the development of a situated concept of risk‐taking. The thesis illustrates how intersecting norms and conceptions around age, gender, class and place are practised at the local level, thus highlighting the social character of risk--‐taking practices. A central analytical notion is the greasers’ negotiation of place, developed through the concept of spatial boredom, which affects their construction of personhood and their social practices. In light of this, the thesis suggests that situated risk-taking with motor vehicles benefit from being formulated as violations, which furthers the understanding of young people’s risk-taking practices with motor vehicles and paves the way for more multi-faceted discussions in theory, as well as in practice and policy-making around traffic safety.